Horton Foote has the ability to make ordinary lives seem important and touching. The people of 1918 are caught up in events they don't understand, and Foote grasps their innocence and weaknesses. His characters are basically good, but they are products of their time. What we now call "innocence" about those times really seems to be a lack of the constant analysis that now permeates our culture. The family members express their frustration with one another and events, but neither question the reasons behind anything, nor suggest to one another (especially the troublemaking Brother) what their problems might be. Human natures are taken as unchanging, and larger social issues are presumed to be governed by simplistic morality and God's will.

The leading player is Elizabeth, an old-style passive belle. She has an exceedingly kind heart but can be prey to her own fears and superstitions, worrying about things like the consequences of naming a child after another that died. Her husband Horace is practically a saint, a loving husband always trying to do the right thing and deeply concerned about the Great War. Together they resist the push and pull of the other family members, insecure types that somehow need for others to believe as they do. Bratty Brother is an emotional child and an irresponsible gambler, yet he takes upon himself the task of condemning his neighbors and goading Horace into enlisting. Horace's father-in-law unconsciously resents that he can't completely control Horace, who refuses to take his gifts. But Horace feels the tension - worrying that he'll have to enlist because Dad has boasted about it. He's pledged a large sum to War Bonds out of an irrational and unnecessary guilt that he hasn't served in uniform personally.

When the Spanish Influenza comes it's like a biblical curse, an unreasoning and invisible negation of family bonds. Horace is concerned with the placing of graves in a cemetery plot, unaware how close he will come to occupying one of his own. With talk of the Flu spreading like wildfire, we shrink back every time somebody shakes hands or exchanges kisses, and when Horace holds his baby soon before coming down with symptoms, the Robedaux family seems destined for total doom. The effect is gripping, but not morbid.

Director Ken Harrison successfully opens up the play with street scenes and exteriors but he keeps Foote's original structure that ellipses big gaps in time between acts. We flash to white along as the ailing Horace passes out, and when "we" awaken together, like Dorothy Gale come home from Oz, the world has been irretrievably altered. The Armistice is something for other people to celebrate, while we look for courage in that part of the family that has survived.

The War that took up everyone's thoughts is now old news. Early homecoming parades for boys who never crossed the Atlantic are big events, but when the real doughboys come marching home much later, they're broken and blinded and nobody lines the streets for them. At the Robedaux house, the promise of new life is met with uncertainty and uneasy fears. Mother Thatcher stands by a window and says that the new baby will at least never have to go away to fight, as they're calling WW1 "the war to end all wars." We know that the new Robedaux boy will be 23 in 1941.

This is practically a Foote production, as he adapted his own stage play and his daughter plays the wonderfully- realized Elizabeth. William Converse-Roberts is the soul of ethics as the husband, and his delirium scenes are underplayed perfectly - he goes nuts but hardly ever raises his voice. Young Matthew Broderick is winning as an unconciously offensive jerk, hip to the fads of the time and oblivious to the petty grief he spreads wherever he goes. Amusingly, he's still doing the same thing by long distance telephone in the last scene. There's also an interesting minor role, an exceedingly shy or partly retarded neighborhood girl named Bessie who is a dear friend and sounding board for Elizabeth. She seems forever in fear of life and ready to panic. Many of the others are simply too set in their convictions (or petty prejudices) to lose hold of decorum.

This is a fascinating show. One gets a feeling of nostalgia from the period character conception, not from the art direction or a set of external signifiers. What 1918 resembles most is a less stylized, less hysterical Our Town set in a specific time and place instead of a shadowy eternity-scape.

I've only seen three or four Foote adaptations and I'm already becoming hooked to his Faulkner-like world. Baby, the Rain Must Fall is about a young man (Steve McQueen) raised by a cruel stepmother who seems to have adopted him for the purpose of having a servant permanently captive to her will. In 1918there is a woman who does the same thing after losing her husband to the Spanish Flu, and she introduces her unhappy step-son as an undeserving boy of lower-class origin.

I'm given to understand that 1918 is actually half of a longer piece collectively called Story of a Marriage. The other half. On Valentine's Day came out a year later and features several of the same key cast members; I just discovered that it too has come out on Image DVD and I'm going to ask to review it right away.

Image's DVD of 1918 is beautifully mastered in enhanced 16:9, is framed much better than the old American Playhouse broadcasts and has excellent color. The subtle soundtrack thrives on atmospheres, with the rustle of leaves in the graveyard and the sound of band music drifing from several blocks away. I'd like to learn more about the show but there are no extras; the package text doesn't even mention the companion feature. I found out about it on the indispensable Internet Movie Database

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, 1918 rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: none
Packaging: Keep case
Reviewed: July 18, 2004